


Human Ambition

by EternalEclipse



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalEclipse/pseuds/EternalEclipse
Summary: After one of Urahara’s schemes fails, Rukia finds herself unexpectedly alone and thrown back into the beginning of her friendship with Ichigo. She decides to take the future into her own hands.





	Human Ambition

Rukia awoke to darkness. She blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Her skin felt tight, like she was in a gigai, and the unresponsiveness of her senses seemed to agree. Urahara was a genius, but the gigai was an unwelcome reminder that he wasn’t perfect. She sat up, trying to figure out exactly where she was, and cried out in surprise when she couldn’t, bumping her forehead against something solid.

Light flooded her eyes as the closet door was shoved open. “Oi, midget, everything alright?” Ichigo asked.

Ichigo looked younger than Rukia ever remembered seeing him. True brown eyes, without the golden tint they had taken on later in the war, and a bit of baby fat hanging around his cheeks. There were literature textbooks and flashcards on his desk, in her line of sight, in a room she hadn’t seen in three years.

“Everything’s fine,” Rukia wiped the shock off of her face. She unfolded herself from the closet. “I’m just going to use the bathroom.”

She left Ichigo watching after her with furrowed eyebrows, and locked herself into the bathroom. A long look into the mirror revealed a face that didn’t quite look like hers. It wasn’t just her hair, which hung longer than she was used to keeping it. She wasn’t sure if it was just because she was in a gigai, or if she just felt aged by the wars she’d fought in, but there was something youthful in this face that she didn’t have anymore.

This hadn’t been the plan. Urahara had cooked up some technology out of the bubblegum and juice straws they had had to work with, something along the line of dimension traveling to the remains of the real Soul King. Rukia didn’t know much, because she hadn’t really been involved. There had just been too many other things going on and too many other people around for her to need to be involved, especially because the Karakura bunch also had had nothing to do with it. Not until the end, anyway.

Urahara had thought to send Ichigo, because if there was someone who could talk anyone into anything they didn’t want to do, it was him. Rukia had been there, because it had been established two years before that she and Ichigo were a good team. After they killed the Second Espada who replaced Barragan, they’d been left to it. They had told Urahara that it was the both of them or neither, and he’d agreed. But wherever Ichigo was, it wasn’t here. This Ichigo was a child, not her trusted companion. She’d give it some time to tell for sure while she figured out her next move, but there was only so much time she could waste figuring out whether Urahara’s contraption had failed that badly.

There was no telling if she was even in her own dimension after all. Even though they were only supposed to get to an earlier time, if the machine had failed at that then it could have messed things up worse. This might already be too close to their present to fix things, even if it was her own timeline.

Rukia shut her eyes, looking inward for Sode no Shirayuki, but true to the first time she had been this age, she couldn’t hear her. Her powers were too weakened by giving what she could to Ichigo, and then by the gigai.

Rukia touched her chest gently. This time period wasn’t something she’d planned for. She knew what this gigai was. She could get out of it, and eventually recover her powers enough to see her sword again. It had only been supposed to help her recover them more quickly, according to Urahara—she would have regained her reiryoku eventually, and her sword would return to her once Ichigo died.

And if she did that she’d leave the hōgyoku unprotected. It was a catch-22. If she stayed long enough in the gigai to sap the last of her powers and render the hōgyoku useless, she might never get to see Sode no Shirayuki again. But if she left it now, and buried or burned it, the hōgyoku might still be there, and Aizen would definitely find it, and try to destroy the three worlds again. If it were that simple, Urahara would have disposed of it that way, as opposed to risking exposure with the Gotei over the disappearance of a noble.

She wondered what her Ichigo would say, before shaking her head. Ichigo would have done whatever it took to protect people. And if that meant losing her powers, then so be it. She’d have to stay in it, live out life as a human, and hope she got to see Sode no Shirayuki once she got reincarnated. Urahara would know what she did from the future most likely, but she’d find a way to become an anonymous informant anyway.

Rukia poked at her gigai’s cheecks, watching them redden. She wondered if it would age human-fast, but Urahara had made it. Of course it would.

* * *

Sneaking away was easy. She sat through one more day of school. When, at the end of the day, Ichigo’s hollow alarm rang, she pushed him out of his body and let him go on without her. Instead, she went to the Shoten and emptied its cash register. Urahara had watched most of Ichigo’s early fights, she remembered, and she had a short window before he would come back.

The shop was thankfully empty when she got there. She didn’t really want to explain herself to Tessai, or have to deal with the children. Urahara would probably be even worse, especially if he channeled his history with the Onmitsukidō to interrogate her.

The register was a bust. There was one five thousand yen bill, and several smaller change. She shut the cash drawer more harshly than she needed to. Six or seven thousand yen would get her as far as the airport, but it wouldn’t get her on a plane anywhere. A train wouldn’t be good enough to completely disappear as she needed to.

She knew she should leave before her luck ran out and she was found, but she didn’t want to have to steal from the Kurosakis to get out of Karakura. Urahara had been a cryptic bastard who’d set her up to die, even if he had become one of their best allies later on, but Ichigo didn’t deserve that, and even Captain Shiba didn’t, especially after all that she’d taken from them.

Even though her window was closing, Rukia decided to look around. Urahara was a backup-plans sort of man, so he had to have a stash lying around somewhere incase Soul Society showed up and he had to make a quick escape.

She wandered over to the snack rack that she most often saw Urahara fiddling with. She pushed around the pocky in the stand, picking a couple up and even stealing a few as a snack for later, but no money revealed itself. She bit into a strawberry one as she tried to make some kind of plan.

It was probably some specific wall panel, or a floor panel, that needed to be pressed in some particular way to react. She didn’t have time for that. Rukia went back to the register, figuring that some money would be better than no money. Crunching on the last of the mochi stick, she yanked open the drawer.

It was full of money.

Rukia fumbled with the strap of her bag, so badly were her hands shaking, even as she struggled to shove everything she could inside. There was a large stack of 10,000 yen bills. She couldn’t count them, but it was definitely more like it.

Although if Sode no Shirayuki caught sight of how badly her hands were trembling, Rukia would be doing exercises for a week, at least. Steady hands live again, she’d tut. Rukia felt a pang of longing for the missing half of her soul.

And then Urahara registered on the edges of her much-diminished senses, and Rukia had to think fast. She shoved the register closed one more time, and returned to the pocky selection. . She picked up another box, this one full of pocky coated with red bean flavored something. When Urahara walked in, she was munching on one of them. Not her favorite, she decided.

“Rukia-chan! I wasn’t expecting you today.” Urahara simpered.

“Hello, Urahara-san,” Rukia smiled. “Have you heard anything new from Soul Society? Or my brother?”

“Nothing new, I’m afraid! Surely someone will send a message for someone as cute as you, Rukia-chan!” And there was the fan.

“How much longer will I have to stay in this gigai,” she complained, as she remembered doing so many times. “My reiryoku should have restored by now!”

“I’m sure it won’t take much longer.”

Rukia nodded, as if with reluctance. She cast her eyes around the shop briefly. “Well, if Ichigo’s done with the hollow, I’m going to go back to make sure he gets back into his body. Let me know if anything’s changed.”

“Of course, Rukia-chan.”

Rukia took the pocky with her as she left, feeling the specter of Urahara’s eyes on her until she was several blocks away. Her bag felt heavier than it was, given that she’d only taken some paper. Rukia hefted it higher anyway, turning towards the railway station.

First she locked herself in a bathroom stall. She took out the money and counted it before adding it to her chappy wallet. Half a million yen. Rukia grinned. She hid it amid the folded clothes she’d taken from the Kurosaki residence that morning, with a small amount in a zippered inner pocket so that she could use it quickly.

She bought herself a ticket to Naruki City, first. Karakura wasn’t tiny, but she couldn’t get lost in it the same way as she could in the city.

On the way, she considered whether she should cut her hair again, before deciding to grow it out, to honor the sword she wouldn’t be seeing for many years. Once she got to Naruki City, she planned to take another train to Tokyo, and buy a plane ticket to wherever was cheapest and far away. Maybe America, where Yuzu and Karin had dreamed of going to school. Maybe somewhere in Europe. Maybe somewhere she’d never even heard of.

She’d disappear. That was all that was important. So she did.


End file.
